Fix the Dilemna: Don’t be a slave to your phone!
Have you caught with the latest documentary of Netflix, “The Social Dilemma”? If you haven’t, go watch it. The use of the internet and the social media has become an intrinsic part of our daily lives, so much so that it is reflecting on our mental health. The addiction is real. The document will bring you home to the fact while you think you are a consumer of social media, you are actually a product.
The documentary throws light of the way the way social media websites and apps plays on our psychology and lure us into spending more and more time glued to our screens. We are reading more, watching more, absorbing more and our productivity in daily life is seriously hampered as we are doing less!
According to a report, millennials spend close to 5.7 hours daily on their phones. We stay up late just scrolling down our social media feed, we wake up early in the morning and reach out for our phones and many times during the day the phone acts as a boredom buster. The “FOMO” disorder, anxiety, depression and negative feelings that we subconsciously absorb through these platforms, plays a huge role in our mental well being. But despite knowing all these facts, we fall as baits to these hooks, hour after hour, day after day.
It is high time that we tame this tricky beast. People have been trying several apps to check and limit their daily usage of social media. Some have even deleted the applications altogether. The solution to any problem begins with the identification of the problem. Identify how much time you are wasting on your phone doing unproductive things. Turn off useless notifications from vendors like retail stores and food joints. Be very careful of what you watch and whom you follow on the social media. Always check the facts from a reliable source before forwarding shady messages on Whatsapp. Restrict your social media usage to the minimum and don’t scroll for more than fifteen minutes at one go. And though you must have heard it a hundred times before, please avoid staring at you phone last thing at night and first thing in the morning as whatever you see and read at these times, impacts your brain in a humongous way.
If used constructively and wisely, you phone will act as your best friend and not some master on whose tunes you dance. Converse with like-minded people on topics that excite you, check regularly on your close friends, learn new things as all these things will enhance your personality and keep you focused as well as optimistic. The technology boom is new to us and we will surely find our way to make the best use of it without it overpowering us!
Stay cheerful,
Anshu Taneja
